Supreme Copies: The Instagram That Attempts to Decode Supreme Clothing

The clothier Alexander Julian once quipped that imitation is the sincerest form of aggravation. In the years after he designed the inaugural uniforms, in 1988, for the Charlotte Hornets, his purple and teal—especially the teal—started popping up on everyone from the Detroit Pistons to the San Jose Sharks and the Jacksonville Jaguars. The streetwear label Supreme, founded six years after Julian’s colors débuted, loves both mischievous appropriation and nineties pop culture, so it’s not hard to see where it got the idea to drop a Hornets-inspired basketball jersey last year. That’s an easy reference to spot, but not every Supreme graphic and logo design has an origin that is so simple to place. Enter the Instagram account Supreme Copies, where a curious streetwear fan might go to find out why Supreme put intersecting screws on a T-shirt, or why the label’s name is aflame on a hat, or the story behind a jacket’s “666” patch.

The person who created Supreme Copies is an eighteen-year-old high-schooler from Oregon who asked to remain anonymous. He’s not one of the hordes camping out for Supreme releases in person or stalking the brand’s online shop—he stopped collecting Supreme a couple of years ago. But he understood enough about what Supreme fans crave to hit a sweet spot in the stream of look books, drop dates, and collaboration news that surround the brand. The account blew up soon after he started posting, last July, and it was only weeks before the magazine Dazedinterviewed him about “demystifying the brand’s designs.” Now, nearly sixty thousand followers strong, he plans to self-publish a Supreme Copies coffee-table book, due out sometime this summer. (“I felt like it was the next-best medium to Instagram,” he said.) He mutes his identity because he wants to keep the focus on his work: “I don’t want the account for any sort of clout,” he said. “I don’t want to do it for the wrong reasons.” When he told the streetwear blog Hypebeast that he wanted to launch his own brand at some point in the future, he was decried as an opportunist. “People were hating on me for saying that,” he said.

Supreme Copies learned about Supreme when he was a preteen, drawn into what the rapper Tyler, the Creator, once called “a little club, a little secret society” by skate videos and the Odd Future collective, but he didn’t start considering an Instagram about the brand until he saw the account of Sean Wotherspoon, the co-owner of the Round Two chain of vintage-streetwear shops. Wotherspoon would sometimes post Supreme clothes alongside old designer gear he found at flea markets, online, and at thrift stores. “My goal was, if you like this Supreme rugby, or this Supreme jacket, you’d love this vintage piece,” Wotherspoon said. Supreme Copies copied that format: “I thought, Someone should cover this,” the teen-ager said. Wotherspoon, who is contributing to the Supreme Copies book for free, liked the account enough to follow it shortly after it appeared, and he still sends in photos of references that he’s discovered.

But if Supreme Copies is a Genius page for the company’s designs, there exists a cadre of day-one fans who scoff at its amateur interpretations of the Supreme mystique. David Shapiro, whose book “Supremacist” fictionalizes his global travels to all but one of Supreme’s ten stores, once told Dazed that “those who understand it more and are greater participants in the culture that Supreme touches are kind of sneering at everyone who is a lesser participant in the brand.” Brian Procell, who opened his Procell Vintage boutique four years ago, is a streetwear picker who takes annual weeks-long trips around the country to source pieces for fashion-house clients. Procell has worked directly with Supreme to find references that designers use as a “starting point or blueprint” for its tees, and his insider status makes him wary of would-be Supreme whisperers. “For a lot of these kids, Instagram is their Wikipedia,” Procell said.

Supreme Copies once riffed on a Supreme tee that appeared to reference the Crown Fried Chicken logo, writing that the tees were “paying homage to New York, by parodying the logo for what I can only assume is good chicken.” It’s the educated guesses that most rile up Procell. He brought up another meat-based post, this one concerning a tee featuring the Boar’s Head logo and the words “Only the strong.” Supreme Copies wrote it up thus: “From fried chicken to baked goods, it’s clear Supreme enjoys the occasional food reference. As to why they select the brands they do—and whether or not they are based on vintage tees of the brands—is beyond me.”

But, for Procell, that’s not enough. He helped design the shirt and said that the words were a callback to “Lord of the Flies.” The head was a nod to the pig’s head that the book’s newly feral boys mount on a stick, and the text ties that moment to the idea that Supreme’s core demographic—well-dressed New York skate rats—had to grow up fast in order to play in city streets. “It’s Ph.D.-level shit,” Procell said. “It’s beyond the bar.” That Supreme Copies didn’t pick this up and properly explain it to its followers is, in Procell’s eyes, a blow to the account’s credibility. Supreme didn’t respond to a request for comment on the Supreme Copies account, but Procell said that the guys he knows in the company know about it and take it less than seriously.

In a 2015 interview with GQ, the former Supreme brand director Angelo Baque lamented that sometimes a reference “goes right over our customers’ heads” to the point that an item doesn’t sell. The company does explain itself sometimes. There’s the occasional interview. A collaboration might have a paragraph of historical summary. A book, released in 2010, catalogued the brand’s output alongside text explaining its ethos. But, in that 2015 GQ interview, Baque fondly likened the brand’s self-imposed remove to the way that record-shop clerks used to exude hostile indifference toward him: “I’d be, like, ‘Yo, can I listen to that new Reflection Eternal 12-inch?,’ and they’d be, like, ‘No,’ and I’d be, like, ‘Oh, shit, they actually spoke to me today.’ ” (The rudeness of Supreme’s shop’s staff is an oft-repeated part of the brand’s lore.)

The inscrutability is kind of the point. When the Times wrote about Supreme in 2012, its writer had to visit the brand’s headquarters three times in order to speak with Baque and the brand’s founder, James Jebbia, because they “needed convincing that the reporter would ‘get the references.’ ” But even without Supreme’s blessing or the endorsement of its in-crowd, Supreme Copies will keep on posting for those less acquainted with the brand’s deep cuts. “It comes as a total surprise to a lot of people,” the teen said. When he announced his book at the fifty-thousand-follower mark, he told them, “I hope you guys all can enjoy this book for what it is.”